Recommended Reads

Pura Belpré Honor-winning author David Bowles joins Newbery Honor-winning Adam Gidwitz as co-author of the newest Unicorn Rescue Society adventure, as the kids travel to the U.S.-Mexican border to help the legendary chupacabras.

A new adventure begins for Elliot and Uchenna when Professor Fauna bursts into their classroom with
a frightening report from the Texas-Mexico border: something has completely drained the blood from
a cow’s body! The team must fly to Laredo, where tempers are running high.
 
Teaming up with local kids Lupita and Mateo—plus their brilliant mother, Dr. Alejandra Cervantes, and her curandero husband, Israel—can the Unicorn Rescue Society save the region’s animals and help bring a divided community together once more? And what is that spiny, bloodsucking, adorable little creature?

In the second fantasy set in Eerie-on-Sea, Herbert and Violet team up to solve the mystery of Gargantis — an ancient creature of the deep with the power to create life-threatening storms.

There's a storm brewing over Eerie-on-Sea, and the fisherfolk say a monster is the cause. Someone has woken the ancient Gargantis, who sleeps in the watery caves beneath this spooky seaside town where legends have a habit of coming to life. It seems the Gargantis is looking for something: a treasure stolen from her underwater lair. And it just might be in the Lost-and-Foundery at the Grand Nautilus Hotel, in the care of one Herbert Lemon, Lost-and-Founder. With the help of the daring Violet Parma, ever-reliable Herbie will do his best to figure out what the Gargantis wants and who stole her treasure in the first place. In a town full of suspicious, secretive characters, it could be anyone!

A silly and spooky highly illustrated series that's perfect for fans of Eerie Elementary and Notebooks of Doom, featuring art on every page and fun activities at the end of each book!

Malia, Dante, and Ivan are ready to take on the evil forces controlling 13th Street. But then Ivan is kidnapped by giant--and stinky!--spiders. Can Malia and Dante save him from their sticky webs

Each story in this hilarious and mildly scary series from award-winning author David Bowles is designed to set independent readers up for success--with short, fast-paced chapters, art on every page, and progress bars at the end of each chapter!

What could be more monstrous than giant vegetable monsters?!

This series is part of Scholastic's early chapter book line called Branches, which is aimed at newly independent readers. With easy-to-read text, high-interest content, fast-paced plots, and illustrations on every page, these books will boost reading confidence and stamina. Branches books help readers grow!

In this fourth book, Alexander is still on the look-out for monsters. Now he thinks they're at school.... The lunch menu is NOT normal -- instead of good-for-you meals, there's ice cream and pie every day. His whole class is crying. And his friend Rip goes missing. Alexander must battle giant meat-eating vegetables before the whole town becomes veggie dinner! Filled with humor, suspense, and zany black-and-white illustrations, this book will keep kids turning the pages!

From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda! 

One of TIME MAGAZINE’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, or any of the other giants—rather than the BFG—she would have soon become breakfast. When Sophie hears that the giants are flush-bunking off to England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!

“This warmhearted tall tale, published a year before Dahl picked up the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, artfully whisks readers away on a magical journey through London, Giant Country and beyond, to a realm of wild imagination.” --TIME Magazine
 

Ancient artifacts provoke fresh fear when a night at the museum goes from fun to freaky in this spine-tingling addition to the You’re Invited to a Creepover series.

Jane is ready for the time of her life. Tonight, she and forty-nine other girls will be spending the whole night in a museum! At first, she’s making lots of new friends and having a ton of fun, but the stakes get raised when one girl, Daria, dares her to take a tour of the museum after lights out. The girls have heard that one of the mummies in the Ancient Egyptian exhibit comes to life when the museum closes. Jane accepts the dare. After all, there’s no way a mummy can come to life. Or is there? And what other secrets will be revealed in a museum at night?

This spooky story is a level 4 on the Creep-o-Meter. Super scary!

4th Bestselling Children's Book Series of all Time --The New Yorker

Your best friend Carlos goes missing from base camp on Mt. Everest while in search of the fabled Yeti. Will you help find him amidst the dangerous crevasses and icefalls of the Himalaya? A monsoon is moving in and you must decide quickly!

The Abominable Snowman by R. A. Montgomery takes YOU on a mountaineering adventure in search of the fabled Yeti, or Abominable Snowman! 9-12 year old readers will travel to Kathmandu and explore the Himalaya Mountains, negotiating harsh weather conditions, facing down a band of violent smugglers, following mysterious footprints in the snow, and maybe even finding the Yeti!

Choose Your Own Adventure is the bestselling gamebook series of all time. Empowering generations of children through choice, it is widely commended for its appeal to reluctant readers.

The Terribles might be monsters, but they're also kids just like you! Well, sort of. This hilarious peek into the world of vampires, mummies, swamp-things, and bigfoots is perfect for fans of the Hotel Transylvania movies.

Vampires, mummies, and gelatinous balls of goo (oh my!). That's right, monsters are real and they've settled down on the quiet island of Creep's Cove. It's a pretty typical place: houses, stores, portals to various nightmarish parallel dimensions. And a school for the kiddos.

Meet the crew: 
Vlad, a fame-thirsty vampire,
Allie, a stuffed animal-dissecting alien,
Lizzie, a short-tempered kaiju,
and SO many others!
 
Told in alternating chapters, comics, poems, charts, and activities each focused on different classic spooky characters this story is the introduction to monsters you humans have been waiting for.

Beast is a fast-paced adventure of guts and survival, this time with a paranormal twist, from acclaimed author Watt Key...

Adam says he can’t remember where he was for the two months he went missing in a Florida swamp. That’s not true. He does remember. The truth: He was driving with his parents, and the car crashed when his father swerved to avoid colliding with a giant Sasquatch-like creature standing in the highway.

Haunted by his parents’ disappearance and hounded for claiming to have seen Bigfoot, Adam sets off into the deadly wilderness on a hunt for answers as to what really happened that night. The answer he finds is more terrifying—and more fascinating—than he could have imagined.

Share the spine-chilling tale of Frankenstein with young readers in this fun, illustrated chapter book! Perfectly spooky, beginner readers will explore the balance between technology and humanity in this adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel.

With just the right amount of scary for spooky little readers, children can delight in the fascinating horror story of Victor Frankenstein.
On a stormy summer evening two centuries ago, Mary Shelley wrote the classic tale about a scientist and his monstrous creation. After Victor Frankenstein discovers the secret to life and uses it to build an eight-foot-tall monster, he realizes he's made a creature that he can't take care of - or control! Frankenstein and the monster chase each other across Europe, along the way learning lessons about ambition and heartbreak, the effects of technology on our lives, judging others based on looks, and the healing powers of nature.

This just-for-kids retelling of Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein:

• Is an abridged, child-friendly version of Mary Shelley's novel
• Features beautiful illustrated hardcover with illustrations in each chapter
• Is perfect for homeschooling, school reading challenges, and beginning readers